User:Coretheapple/COIstress

Draft essay: COI editing is stressful for everybody

In a nutshell: Have mercy on yourself and other editors. Don't edit about your pals.

There are many areas of stress on Wikipedia. Contentious topic areas, of course, but even minor, seemingly trivial subjects and issues can result in raised temperatures. User boxes, for instance, are frequently a source of fierce debate, for and against, especially where popular entertainment figures are concerned. That might surprise people outside of Wikipedia.

No area of Wikipedia is guaranteed to be stressful with one exception: editing about your friends, your colleagues, your family members and, of course, bout yourself. This falls under the general rubric of conflict of interest, and is covered by the conflict of interest guideline. But that guideline fails to capture the stress involved.

The reason it's stressful is that people simply cannot be objective about the people they know, or themselves.

The Lake Woebegone Effect
As Garrison Keile r used to say about the inhabitants of the fictional Lake Woebegone in A Prairie Home Companion, "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." When people write about their friends, family and themselves, that's how they tend to feel. Their achievements, no matter how routine, are magnificent, or at least worthy of inclusion in a Wikipedia article. The people themselves are outstanding, certainly well above average.

Writing an article about such people is guaranteed to produce stress.

Sooner or later, an editor with no connection to the subject matter will cut back on the puffery, the poor sourcing and other content issues. This can be and often is stressful for all concerned, as editors who are intent on promoting their friends or themselves tend not to be here to build an encyclopedia.